Cardboard Fenway: 1960 Topps Pumpsie Green (RC)

Cardboard Fenway - #98. 1960 Topps Pumpsie Green (RC)

Remember this: The Boston Red Sox were one of the last teams to integrate. Who do we have to thank for this? Lots of guys, most notably Pinky Higgins.

Cardboard Fenway: 1960 Topps Carl Yastrzemski (RC) 1999 Fenway All-Star Game Edition

Cardboard Fenway - #91. 1960 Topps Carl Yastrzemski (RC) 1999 Fenway All-Star Game Edition

I got free tickets to Fan Fest back in the summer of 1999, so I went, collected my wrappers, and traded in for this super-cool foil-stamped mega-retro hyphen-hyphen reprint of everybody's favorite second baseman.

Cardboard Fenway: 1960 Topps Earl Wilson (RC)

Cardboard Fenway - #50. 1960 Topps Earl Wilson (RC)

Earl Wilson was a heckuva pitcher, and another guy whom the Red Sox gave away for nothing. He was the first African-American to throw a no-hitter in an American League game.

Keeper: 1960 Leaf "Baseball's Two Hal Smiths"

Consolidation has never felt so good. Big trade with Blake Meyer of Twinscards.com, not to mention selling off stacks and stacks of cards on eBay have left me focused. More is going up later this week, including vintage basketball cards.

Over the past week I've received a lot of recommendations for Keepers, so I thought I'd kick things off by talking about one of my favorite cards: 1960 Leaf "Baseball's Two Hal Smiths". It's on my Keeper List, and is a card I don't own.

It's a Keeper because it isn't clear what the two Hal Smiths are doing in their photo. Are they negotiating over the bill? Are they diapering a baby? Because the background has been removed, context is missing (and desperately, desperately needed). These guys could be anywhere – a bus stop... a locker room...

It's no secret, my love for 1960 Leaf (read my set review here). The photos are mug-shot bad, the cards themselves came packaged with marbles, and the design has a style aesthetic with as much pizzazz as checkerboard kitchen linoleum. But what it's lacking in visual appeal, it more than makes up for in awkwardness. Awkward halos behind each head. Awkward checklist including immortal baseball gods Stover McIlwain (out of the league since 1958), Marshall Renfroe (career = 1 game in 1959), and baseball's two Hal Smiths (one a journeyman, the other an All Star). And did I mention that the cards were awkwardly packaged with marbles? I understand that Topps had cornered the market on the cards and gum thing, but seriously, who came up with marbles?

There's something about Hal Smith... both of him. I can't think of another time when two players shared the same name. (Wait a minute... Steve Ontiveros? Weren't there two of that guy?) I've mentioned this already, but one Hal was a journeyman and the other Hal was an All Star. The All Star had a knack for showing up on his baseball cards in full catcher regalia; that is, toothily smiling through his mask in a creepy crouching position. I can think of at least two cards (1958 Topps and 1960 Topps) of him photographed like that. The journeyman was just ugly: pursed lips, narrowed eyes... it was as if he was a street-corner criminal scouting for the next fence.

This one is also a Keeper for me because it's a combo card. But instead of Hal and Hal hamming it up under a corny line like "Backstop Buddies" or something, as Topps was wont to do throughout the Sixties, Sports Novelties kept it obvious, in a Ripley's Believe-it-or-Not informative kind of way. It's "Baseball's Two Hal Smiths" because that's who they are. In the end it matters not what they're doing, just that they appear together. 

That's why this one's a Keeper.

Purge: The first cards to go

Purge update. There's no turning back. Those of you who want to trade with me or want some of my cards, email me and we'll figure something out. Also, two nights ago I started listing cards on eBay. You can follow my auctions here.

Last night I posted three lots of 1959 Topps Venezuelan, nine cards total. Almost immediately, they all sold at the "buy it now" price. If you're interested in Venezuelan cards, I have about 20 from 1960 and 16 from 1966, in various conditions, with Hall of Famers, stars of the day, rookies, Yankees, Dodgers, and commons.

Also this weekend, I'll be posting a whole bunch of lots from the 1970s, as well as going through and putting together a 1986 Topps set, then giving away all the doubles. If you're in the Brookline/Boston area and have a hankering for 1986 Topps baseball cards, drop me a line before I drop them on Craigslist.

The Keeper List update. As part of The Epiphany, I'm putting together a list of Keepers. What makes a card a Keeper? It's a card I have a favorable gut reaction to, if that makes any sense. For me the holy quintet of baseball cards is 1953 Topps Ed Mathews, 1954 Topps O'Brien Brothers, 1958 Topps Stan Musial All-Star, 1959 Topps Roy Campanella "Symbol of Courage" and 1972 Topps Roberto Clemente. These are cards I'd consider framing, cards that transcend their subjects, cards that I consider artwork. Of course there are others: 1978 Topps Eddie Murray, 1986 Donruss Jose Canseco, 1987 Topps Bo Jackson to name a few.

This is a work in progress, but you can follow that progress by viewing the Keeper List here. If you'd like to trade with me, these are the cards I'm interested in obtaining.

This weekend I'm going to start posting more about The Purge in earnest. But I'm serious, if you want to trade with me or you just plain want some of my cards, email me.

Countdown #45: 1960 Leaf

In a brilliant move, Leaf sold these—in the same wrapper—with marbles. It’s a miracle any of these cards survived even the first trip from the factory to the drugstore. Packaging aside, this is a neat little set, with overly candid black and white photos probably taken by a high school yearbook photographer on his lunchbreak. I’m serious—if one of the players included in this set ever ended up on the lam, post offices around the country could just tack that player’s card from this set to their wall. This set is an open textbook on the art of proper mug shot photography.

It’s as if Leaf was a decrepit scientist in a faraway castle tower, surrounded by stacks upon teetering stacks of media guides, flipping through each one until deciding upon the 144 ugliest ballplayers in the majors. What other possible explanation is there for the inclusion of this particular group of players? Were they all on the same prison bus? It’s amazing that Don Mossi and Wally Moon weren’t invited to this dance.

Of course, the photography is what makes this set memorable. Because it sure as hell ain’t the checklist. The checklist is weak, and understandably so. You don’t just go up against Topps and get away with it so easily. Leaf was lucky to get Brooks Robinson and Duke Snider, Orlando Cepeda, Curt Flood, Jim Bunning and the ten or so second and third-tier guys. And at 144 that translates into a pretty decent success rate (it’s just the quality of the success rate that is questionable).


So, despite the fun fotos (which almost look like they could’ve been early Polaroids), this set finds itself way the hell down at #45 for a number of reasons. First, as I mentioned, despite the heroics associated with the act of going up against the Topps monopoly, the checklist suffers from lack of star power.

Second, the design stinks. It was an obvious rip-off/update of the classic 1949 design (one of the best-looking sets ever, post-war or pre-, and one of the most universal in its design (look at Japanese cards through the Twentieth Century and you’ll see what I mean)), but it lacks the necessary oomph to make it work. Say what you will about thin black lettering and kitchen linoleum white backgrounds, but when you combine those with creepy, In-Cold-Blood-mugshot photography, the design really doesn’t do it. Then again, I might be alone in this opinion. Wasn’t there a gigantic tribute set in the Seventies made by Renata Gallasso in a sort of homage to this design? I think there was. But if memory serves me correct, they didn’t use stark, straight-on headshots. If I remember correctly, there were a lot of posed action shots.


Lastly, this set didn’t exactly inspire collectors, entice players to sign with Leaf for 1961 and beyond or intimidate Topps to buy them out. It was the only baseball set Leaf put out in the Sixties, and the last baseball set they’d put out until 1985, when Leaf was re-introduced as the Canadian Donruss imprint. Still, it’s a fun little set…as long as your idea of fun includes Steve Korcheck.

Countdown #46. 1960 Fleer Baseball Greats

If you're not familiar with this set, Fleer put out a flurry of small competitor sets to Topps in the late 1950s and early 1960s in baseball, football and basketball (actually, basketball is a special case, as sets from this time period are few and far between: Bowman put out a set in 1948, Topps put out a set for the 1957-58 season, and then Fleer came out with a set for 1961-62. So to call them competitors in this particular sport is not exactly accurate. But Topps and Fleer were competitors in baseball, so let's not discuss basketball, if that's okay).

Anyway, as mentioned in a previous post, Fleer put out a mega-hero-worship set in tribute to Ted Williams' retirement in 1959. Then, to capitalize on the idea of hero worship, they put out two sets of 'baseball greats' (including the newly retired Williams in both years) in 1960 and 1961. You might think that because the players depicted were not active when the sets were made, these two sets should be grouped under one ranking. I beg to differ. The two series differ greatly, and yes, the difference is enough that would warrant one set finding itself at the bottom of this countdown (1960) and the other somewhere in the middle (1961). There's just that much of a difference.

First, the 1960 design is lacking a, well, a design. If you examine it against the 1961 set, and even its contemporaries (most of which are no prize pigs themselves), it sucks. Four small colored triangles pushed to the edges like sticky photo album corners, framing mostly colorized black and white photos of players posed as if they were wax figures in a poorly lit tableau at a roadside attraction. The back is rather plain, but it does feature a nice clean typeface and a good amount of copy about each player.

Second, when you examine the checklist, it’s really not bad. I mean, as far as a set of old timers goes. It’s got Ruth, Gehrig, Cobb, Mathewson, Speaker, Hubbell, the freshly minted old timer Ted Williams and the ridiculous but seemingly mandatory inclusion of league presidents Frick and Giles (it’s like they were included to remind everyone that old spooks never die). There’s also Jimmie Foxx (spelled ‘Jimmy’), Bob Feller, Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson and Hal Newhouser. But no Monte Irvin. And no Jackie Robinson. You’d of thought that armed with just an 80 card checklist and going against a powerhouse competitor in Topps, Fleer would’ve made more splashes than just the Williams signing in 1959.

The question of Robinson aside, when you think about it today it seems so innocent, if not uncanny: it was Fleer’s second stab at a real, honest-to-goodness baseball card set, coming on the heels of the ‘Williams in ‘59’ campaign (a relatively clean, sharp and to the point set (if over the top in its hero worship)). Flash ahead twenty years to 1982 and you’ve got the same deal playing out (if different circumstances): the company celebrates a court victory and a return to cards with a clean and simple inaugural set in 1981, then gets completely wasted over winter break and hits the sophomore slump with a crappy set in 1982. So, stepping back to 1960, should history be a little kinder to this set?

I don’t think so. It was a major coup to get Williams away from Topps. But after the hoopla died down from his own set, why did Fleer bury him at card #72? Everybody knew how good he was. Shouldn’t the set have confirmed it and placed him in the pantheon of greats in the first ten cards? Or put him as a tacky #1?

In today’s mindset, the idea of doing an old timers’ set isn’t that big of a deal. TCMA made their money doing them in the Seventies, there were plenty of one-offs in the 1990s (The Conlon Collection and The Ted Williams Card Company come to mind) and Topps has done plenty of them since launching the Archives brand in 1991. But it seems like Fleer was really going out on a limb to do this in 1960, and even though the set was kind of lousy, it set the table for a much better set in 1961.

Card scans from Dan Austin's Virtual Card Collection.